The panel discussed general tendancies and developments in Russian distribution while FNE was presented as a vital tool for Russian distributors to connect with the central European and Baltic region and their rapidly changing film markets. FNE recently began publishing in Russian language as a way of opening a window to Russia for the countries it covers.
The Russian box office grew to over 1 bln USD in 2010 making it one of the top five in the world. The box office has been increasing steadily in Russia as it was enormously underscreened in the 1990's and has grown 30% in the past two years. But while the box office has grown the market share of Russian and European films has decreased over the past year with the US majors having 75% of the box office. Motina also spoke about how DVD sales have also fallen dramatically over the past few years.
In 2010 we saw a major increase in the number of 3D digital screens in Europe while at the same time the market share of European films fell by 25%. The market share of Russian films also fell in 2010. Speaking about the impact of 3D films on the Russian market Dishdishyan said: "Most of Russian films aren't in 3D. The growth of 3D screens has affected the huge box office success of US majors films such as Avatar, Shrek, Alice in Wonderland, Resident Evil, Piranha and other 3D films. Ticket prices for 3D films are also higher. However, we see that 3D effect is a gimmick and the excitement is already going down. For some genre such as animation, fantasy, action, horror it makes sense to see the movie in 3D but for the rest it doesn't. There were a few Russian movies in 3D which were successful last year as for example Dark World.
" Most of the successful Russian movies in the last two years have been comedies with good marketing. Unfortunately, Russian audiences have generally been disappointed with the quality of Russian movies. Hopefully, with new government financing and a major clean up of film market itself, we will see a return of well done and well marketed Russian films and the growth of their market share in Russia."
The enormous growth of the Russian box office over the past 5 or 6 years has been largely due to the growth in the number of screens in Russia. Russia was greatly underscreened before. We saw in Central and Eastern Europe a similar rapid growth which then fell off sharply when the number of screens reached saturation point.
At end of 2010 there was 865 theaters and 2430 screens. The average is 2.8 screens per theater compared with an average of 6 screens per theatre in developed countries which means Russia is still behind in the number of multiplexes.
Dishdishyan said: "In Russia there is only one screen per 60 thousand people putting Russia behind Poland and other CEE countries. So there is room for growth.
However, the average income for Russia (except Moscow and St Petersburg) is far below our Eastern European neighbors, and this is a significant obstacle for the growth of theaters. Moscow and St Petersburg are pretty much saturated with number of theaters and future growth depends on underdeveloped Russian regions especially in the Russian East.
"With the average number of screens per capita as it now stands, plus the low average income of the people who live in Russian regions, I believe that a target of 5000 screens is the least risky number of screens for Russia over the next 3 years. "
The roundtable was organized by Russian Pavilion www.ruspav.com with the support of FNE
